Gendered advertising: content, effectiveness and effects – psychological perspective

Abstract

The concept of gender has enjoyed a long and sustained interest in marketing (Meyers-Levy and Loken, 2015) including advertising (Eisend, 2010; Eisend, Plagemann and Sollwedel, 2014; Grau and Zotos, 2016). The results of gender-based marketing strategies are readily visible. Take one look at any toy shop and you will know instantaneously which part of it targets girls and which targets boys. There are a number of reasons why a consumer’s gender is used so frequently as a segmentation strategy. Gender, understood as a biological binary (e.g. women vs men), is easily identifiable, the gender-based segments are accessible, they seem responsive to marketing mix elements and they are large and therefore potentially profitable (Wolin, 2003). This gender-binary has historically dominated practice and research in marketing and is explained by various and compatible psychological theories such as socio-cultural, evolutionary, neuropsychological and selectivity hypothesis. An excellent and current review of these approaches and relevant research is offered by Meyers-Levy and Loken (2015). Wolin (2003) on the other hand offers a review of similar – gender-binary – issues in advertising including: gender role stereotyping, selectivity hypothesis, spokesperson’s gender effects, gender differences in advertising effects and gender brand positioning. However, meta-analytical research shows that demographics, gender being one, have limited and often lower predictive value than psychographics in marketing (Arts, Frambach and Bijmolt, 2011). Thus, it is important to recognize gender-related, that is psychographic, aspects of gender such as gender identity, gender attitudes, gender subtypes and stereotypes. With this in mind the current chapter addresses this gap in the literature by providing a needed review of research on gendered advertising content, effectiveness and effects. It treats the subject from positivist social psychological perspective and proposes developments in psychological theory such as the Stereotype Content Model, implicit social cognition and Stereotype Threat Theory as useful frameworks to synthetize the seemingly conflicting findings on the